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Having been involved in healthcare now for many years, it became pretty clear shortly after starting in the industry how you should market – aim your marketing weapons firmly toward women. Did you know that women make over 80% of the healthcare decisions in the family? Women take care of themselves, their families, their spouses and their aging parents. They are the true bosses of the home! Women make the majority of the consumer purchases in the household and have a major influence on consumer spending in the future. Women are more educated and now stats show more women are attending college than men; medical school stats show a large increase in women becoming doctors.

There are many great resources to help figure out how to best market to women. I’m in the middle of reading a great book called Emotional Branding by Marc Gobe. It’s been out a few years, but it has a chapter devoted to this topic. Lately my personal favorite resource for marketing to women is over at Reach Group Consulting founded by Lisa Johnson. Lisa spent over 2 years researching various methodologies of women and the new generations who are more adept at today’s technology than you might think.

A favorite topic of hers that I particularly enjoy is the concept of push-pull marketing. She mentions how yesterday’s marketers pushed out messages to you in the hopes you would come running. As time has evolved, today’s marketers have had to shift to a wisened population. Today consumers want to be part of the experience, part of the development, and part of the process. Tell me a story, make me feel engaged, provide me an experience. And we now see it emerging with Starbuck’s, Apple and their retail stores – and the latest is Mt. Dew’s new site, Dewmocracy where you can help Mt. Dew develop a new flavor along with choosing the liquid’s color, picking the logo, and finally choosing which supplement gets added. While the concept of Mt. Dew’s campaign would not appear to be squarely aimed at women, they do ask during the registration process about your interest in the subject “online groceries.” Hmmm… Choose wisely – start marketing to women now…or wish later that you had.

The NBA started the last couple of years engaging women in their advertising. Rather than their usual ads they began issuing stories of their players with the hope that the format would pull women into the fold. Now the NFL has taken a similar approach and it’s paying off. The NFL has some great commercials – one in particular where women wearing NFL women’s apparel greet one another at the door wearing competing teams. Now the Baltimore Ravens have created a women’s only group to support the team – called Purple. Having collected a membership close to 3500 in the past year, the Ravens are doing what every man dreamed of – they’re getting women excited about football! Hats off to Baltimore and hats off to the NFL for turning weekend enemies of football into advocates. For us married folk, Sunday afternoons just might get a little easier…especially if the yard needs mowing… Kudos to the Church of the Customer for this article.